Kithara facts for kids

Ancient Roman fresco depicting women in a peristyle, listening to another woman play a kithara and sambuca (instrument).

The kithara, or Latinized cithara (Greek: κιθάρα, romanized: kithára, Latin: cithara), was an ancient Greek musical instrument in the yoke lutes family. It was a seven-stringed professional version of the lyre, which was regarded as a rustic, or folk instrument, appropriate for teaching music to beginners. As opposed to the simpler lyre, the cithara was primarily used by professional musicians, called kitharodes. In modern Greek, the word kithara has come to mean "guitar", a word which etymologically stems from kithara.

Origin and uses

The cithara originated from Minoan-Mycenaean swan-neck lyres developed and used during the Aegean Bronze Age. Scholars such as M.L. West, Martha Maas, and Jane M. Snyder have made connections between the cithara and stringed instruments from ancient Anatolia.

Whereas the basic lyra was widely used as a teaching instrument in boys’ schools, the cithara was a virtuoso's instrument and generally known as requiring a great deal of skill. The cithara was played primarily to accompany dance, epic recitations, rhapsodies, odes, and lyric songs. It was also played solo at the receptions, banquets, national games, and trials of skill. Aristotle said that these string instruments were not for educational purposes but for pleasure only. It was played by strumming the strings with a stiff plectrum made of dried leather, held in the right hand with elbow outstretched and palm bent inwards. The strings with undesired notes were damped with the straightened fingers of the left hand.

Construction

The cithara had a deep, wooden sounding box composed of two resonating tables, either flat or slightly arched, connected by ribs or sides of equal width. At the top, its strings were knotted around the crossbar or yoke (zugon) or to rings threaded over the bar, or wound around pegs. The other ends of the strings were secured to a tail-piece after passing over a flat bridge, or the tail-piece and bridge were combined.

Most vase paintings show citharas with seven strings, in agreement with ancient authors, but those same authors also mention that occasionally an especially skillful kitharode would use more than the conventional seven strings.

Apollo as a kitharode

Apollo kitharoidos (Apollo holding a cithara and wearing the customary kitharōdos’ robes) and musagetes (leading the Muses). Marble, Roman artwork, 2nd century CE.

The cithara is said to have been the invention of Apollo, the god of music. Apollo is often depicted playing a cithara instead of a lyre, often dressed in a kitharode’s formal robes. Kitharoidos, or Citharoedus, is an epithet given to Apollo, which means "lyre-singer" or "one who sings to the lyre".

An Apollo Citharoedus or Apollo Citharede, is the term for a type of statue or other image of Apollo with a cithara. Among the best-known examples is the Apollo Citharoedus at the Vatican Museums, a 2nd-century CE colossal marble statue by an unknown Roman sculptor.

Famous cithara players

• Phrynnis (Ancient Greek: Φρῦνις) of Lesbos: The Suda mentions that Phrynnis was the first to play the cithara at Athens and won at the Panathenaea; by cithara is probably meant the new 12-stringed instrument invented by Melanippides of Melos.

Two sketches of string instrument players (citharas, lyres or rottas?) from the Utrecht Psalter, drawn by an Anglo-Saxon artist in Reims, c. 850 CE.

Other instruments called "cithara"

In the Middle Ages, cythara was also used generically for stringed instruments, including lyres, but also including lute-like instruments. The use of the name throughout the Middle Ages looked back to the original Greek cithara, and its abilities to sway people's emotions.

Gallery

• 

  Greek vase drawing depicting a man playing a cithara with eight strings. Note the plectrum in his lowered right hand.

• 

  Kithara player by the Berlin Painter c. 490 BCE

• 

  Nike flying with kithara by the Providence Painter

• 

  Muse tuning two phorminges. The phorminx was an intermediate stage, as the cithara developed from the lyre. Detail of the interior from an Attic white-ground cup from Eretria, c. 465 BCE.

• 

  A Roman representation of a woman playing the cithara (Villa Boscoreale, ca. 40-30 BCE).

• 

  Cithara on the reverse of a hemidrachm from Cragus (Lycian League).

• 

  Apollo Kitharoidos. Painted plaster, Roman artwork from the Augustan period.

• 

  Orpheus Mosaic in Rottweil

• 

  Alcaeus of Mytilene playing a cithara while Sappho listens in Sappho and Alcaeus by Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1881; The Walters Art Museum).

• 

  Girl with lute by George Lawrence Bulleid, 1905

See also